Luke studied his red Mandalorian armor. His sister should've been sitting next to him wearing a similar set in whatever color she decided suited her character. If the bastards who had taken his sister hadn't mind-wiped her, she would've returned to him years ago. They would pay.

Several times, he and dad had tried to rescue her, and several times they had ended up empty-handed, barely escaping with their lives. Now all there was to do was to wait long enough for the security officers to become slow and complacent once more, then try again. One day, he would have his sister back at his side where she belonged. Family belonged together.

Luke tuned out the whining coming from the cargo hold. He didn't care what the merchandise was saying (something about triple), only about the credits he'd receive when he delivered it to Jabba. This had been an extremely easy hunt, and he would have to find something more challenging soon.

After delivering the merchandise to Jabba and receiving his payment, Luke decided to follow an odd thought that he suddenly had. The thoughts that felt like this one had payed off more often than not in the past, most likely because they came from the Force.

Carefully stowing his ship in a cave that he knew wouldn't be disturbed, Luke removed his armor and stashed it in a storage compartment. He carefully reset his security system to repel anything other than him that came too close, pulled his old Swoop bike out of the cargo hold, and flew to Mos Eisley. Upon reaching Mos Eisley, he walked into the first cantina he saw and sat down at the bar. At a table across the cantina from the bar, he saw a very familiar old man in Jedi robes with a lightsaber on his belt negotiating passage with a small time smuggler with a chump change bounty on his head. After the old man left, Luke moved swiftly to the spot that he had vacated.

"So, how much to have me added to your passenger manifest?" Luke asked the brown haired smuggler before he could get up to leave.

"Ten thousand, all in advance." The smuggler whose name was Solo said.

"For that amount, you'd better be waiting on me hand and foot. Tell you what, I'll go discount and pay you three." Luke said grinning at the smuggler.

"Six, and you show me the color of your money right now, or stop wasting my time." Solo said looking irritated.

"Since you are going to Alderaan anyways, I think it would be a total waste to pay any more than four." Luke said as he pulled the credits from his pocket and showed them to the smuggler. "Four thousand extra for a trip is four thousand more than nothing extra."

"Who said anything about Alderaan?" Solo said suddenly becoming defensive.

"The old man did earlier to someone else, and since I won big today I decided to explore the galaxy starting with Alderaan. I hear that it's a very nice place, very green." Luke said as he drew the credits back toward his pocket.

Han watched the disappearing credits and sighed. He would need those credits to pay off Jabba. He hoped that he wasn't getting into something he would regret later. The kid didn't look like an Imperial, so there shouldn't be any complaints from the old man.

"Fine," Solo said holding his hand out "Four it is. Be at docking bay 93 in an hour and don't be late."

Once Luke left the table, Chewbacca growled something to Han.

"Look Chewie, we need the credits, and as long as our passengers don't try to kill us or each other I don't care what they're up to." Han told his longtime companion. "Just get the ship ready, and be on the lookout for trouble."

Chewbacca growled something back at his friend before he left the cantina.

"I know that I'm being extremely stupid, but we really need the credits." Han muttered at his friend's retreating back.

&!&!&!&!&

Leia sat in her detention cell staring at the ceiling and wondering why a fragment of a bedtime story of some sort that had to do with the Jedi Anakin Skywalker ran through her head every time she saw Lord Vader. The strange thing about it was that she could've sworn that none of her family nor any of her friends had told it to her.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, Vader once more entered the cell she was being held captive in to question her. Her lips moved as her mind once more recited the same two lines it had several times over since her capture, the two lines that she was somehow associating with Vader.

"Before you were born, the Clone Wars ended with the Jedi being declared traitors and the Jedi being exterminated. It was at that time that Anakin went missing and was presumably killed."

Vader paused. What was the princess whispering about? What did the Jedi purges and the "disappearance" of his former self have to do with anything? It had nothing to do with the plans to the Death Star or the location of the hidden Rebel base, so it was unimportant for now. But later, he would find out just exactly what the princess was talking about. Shoving the extraneous thoughts aside, he brought in the mind probe to begin the interrogation.

Leia was in pain, the probe was torturing her and she couldn't stop it. She cried out in misery because she knew that she was going to break. She broke, breaking straight through a barrier into a part of her mind that she had unconsciously shoved back time and again, fearing what it contained. A part that had preserved itself for a long time despite a medical professional's best attempts to destroy it. She found exactly where the six years that had been taken from her had gone. Image after image sped past her, and she wrapped them around herself like a shield. She remembered one of the first lessons in bounty hunting that her dad, Boba Fett, had given her:

"You make people pay you for information, it is not to be given away freely."

If Vader wanted the information she had, he would have to pay dearly, and probably not in the way he expected the "Princess of Alderaan" to make him pay. The plans to the Death Star alone had to be worth at least half a million. She would have to somehow get herself into a position where she could negotiate. Until then, she would have to endure this interrogation.

&!&!&!&!&

Several hours later, Vader went to give his report to Tarkin wondering at the strange change that had come over his prisoner. At one point early in the interrogation, it appeared that she would break and spill everything, and then he suddenly hit a hard core of determination and something else. By the time the interrogation ended, the naive and idealistic young princess had vanished and something else entirely had taken her place.

"So, any luck?" Tarkin asked as soon as Vader entered the Death Star's conference room.

"Her resistance to the mind-probe was remarkable." Vader said leaving out his pondering on the changes he had witnessed in the princess, hoping that he hadn't broken her mind and driven her insane somehow. It was really hard to get information out of a crazy person.

"Then perhaps we should use an alternative form of persuasion." Tarkin said, barely hiding his grin of anticipation. He had always hated Alderaan. He was highly allergic to some of the more common plants, and every visit he had been forced to endure had been torture.

&!&!&!&!&

As the Millenium Falcon blasted out of the Mos Eisley spaceport and into the reaches of outer space, Luke Fett sized up his traveling companions. The wookiee would probably be trouble later on, as it was looking at him funny. The smuggler, if it came to it, would most likely be dead before he even drew his blaster. The Jedi Kenobi would be tough. It was said that the Jedi got more powerful the older they got, and he had only barely escaped the man that one time he'd captured him years ago. The droids were inconsequential.

"Your days are numbered, old man." Luke said to the Jedi, scowling as he said it. Such cheap intimidation tactics had always amused him, and he often used them on his targets just for the entertainment value. The bounty for bringing in a living Jedi, especially this one was enormous. As soon as they touched down on Alderaan, he would try to make the capture. Fighting on the ship would be both pointless and dangerous. He wasn't in the mood to find himself in space without a suit thanks to an old Jedi cutting through the hull with a lightsaber any time soon.

"I don't want any trouble on my ship. You can fight or whatever when we reach Alderaan and I've gotten paid." Solo said, not bothering to turn around and look at his passengers. They hadn't been in hyperspace for more than a minute, and the problems were starting already. He should've taken Chewie's advice and tossed the credits back at the kid.

"That's okay, I can wait. There are some people on Alderaan that have it coming to them as well." Luke said smirking slightly at the thought of what he would do to Bail Organa if he ever caught him alone.

"Good. Now that we understand each other, get the hell out of my cockpit." Solo said gesturing sharply towards the door.

As soon as they left, Chewbacca began to growl nervously.

"You're right old pal, we should've left this one alone." Han said patting the highest spot on Chewbacca that he could reach. "I think I'll go out and make sure that the passengers don't destroy the ship."

&!&!&!&!&

Leia looked at Alderaan knowing exactly what was going to happen. Tarkin hated Bail Organa with a vengeance, and would happily blow Alderaan to space dust no matter what she said. There was no way she could save the people of Alderaan.

In that moment, she decided that she would never give the plans to the Death Star over to the Imperials, or the location of the Rebel base. She would leave them alive to sabotage this technological menace that never should've been built. Killing those who deserved it was one thing, but the pointless slaughter of innocents was something that could not be tolerated. Both Bail and dad had separately taught her that long ago.

The whole farce went pretty much as expected. She kept her silence even as the planet was destroyed and the shockwaves of the destruction had rippled out through the Force, reaching her seconds later. There was nothing she could've done to stop this. She remained silent as Lord Vader led her back to her cell.

&!&!&!&!&

Luke felt the disturbance in the Force at the same time as Kenobi did.

"Osik! That's worse than the time when Hilli got flattened." Luke said remembering the time he had been in-system when the imperials had decided to bombard Hilli city from space.

The old Jedi merely sat down with a saddened expression on his face.

"What's wrong?" Solo asked wondering what new problem would crop up on the trip from the sixth Corellian hell.

"It was as if..." the old Jedi began.

"Some place got blasted to hell!" Luke exclaimed, cutting him off.

"And, how would you know this?" Han asked wondering what had possessed him to pick up the pair of nutcases. The credits weren't worth this.

"The Force." Both Luke and the old Jedi said at the same time.

"What do you know of the Force, young Skywalker?" the old Jedi asked the boy, now young man, that he hadn't seen in years, ever since he'd made the mistake of attempting to remove him from Fett's custody. He had correctly feared that the man would poison the boy against the Jedi order, and had incorrectly feared that the man would hand Luke over to Vader were the price right.

"It could be a pretty useful tool at times, but depending on it is just plain lazy. Trillions of people do well without it." Luke said, not bothering to correct the old man on his name since it would cause unnecessary trouble with the smuggler.

"I had wondered why I had brought this with me, now I know." the old Jedi said as he pulled a cylindrical object from his satchel. "This once belonged to your father."

Luke took the lightsaber and studied it intensely. The old man spoke the truth, he could feel it. He held the symbol of his biological father's bondage to an order that had made a boy make vows that he didn't understand. It had been used in "The defense of the galaxy", and used when he turned against his masters in a desperate attempt to save the woman he loved. It had been stolen from him by a man who had been like a father to him, just like everything else in his life.

He looked up at the man who had handed the lightsaber to him.

"I had thought that you were only responsible for my and Leia's kidnapping, but now I know otherwise. I will wait until my sister is by my side before I get even with you, Master Kenobi." He said as he activated his biological father's lightsaber and held it against the old man's neck. He then deactivated it and walked away.

"What was that all about?" Solo asked as he followed Luke who was now armed and doubly dangerous.

"I once went back to the place where I was born. I checked the records for that day, and noticed something. According to the medical droid's memory log, the incision that the droid had made had been perfect for a C-section. However, the images of the wound that I found on the security holos didn't match up with the droid's records. I checked the droid's records and found no signs of tampering." Luke said turning his biological father's lightsaber around and around. "I had thought that someone could have tampered with the droid's memory, but considering what Kenobi did to my birth father..."

"What does that have to do with what happened back there?" Solo asked. The kid seemed to be about ten nerfs short of a herd.

"The Force can easily be used to tear a wound open. I've done it on a couple of occasions. And from what I'd seen in the holo, that's exactly what happened." Luke said twirling the lightsaber in the opposite direction getting a flash of Kenobi dismissing his biological father's vision of his grandmother as a nightmare. "Kenobi was there when we were born. He was less than three feet away from my mother the entire time. He knew that she would never give her babies away. He knew that she would never allow them to be separated."

"You don't mean..." Solo began unable to finish the thought.

"Jedi aren't as moral as people believed them to be. They would often do what's "necessary" when it suits their purposes." Luke said tossing the lightsaber from hand to hand.

Han stood there wondering why the boy was acting so calm. Damn, if he found some guy who had killed his mother, he would've already torn his throat out and would be stomping on the remains.

"I want my sister to be there so she can get a shot as well." Luke said, answering Solo's unasked question.

&!&!&!&!&

Obi-wan sat listening to the conversation between the boy and the smuggler. The old saying "You reap what you sow." came to mind. He had indeed killed Padme in a way that would be blamed on the medical droids. If she had been allowed to keep the babies, they'd have almost immediately ended up in the hands of the Emperor, turned over by their own father. He had done what he had to do for both the good of the children, and the good of the galaxy as a whole. Now, the children were coming back to avenge their mother, and he deserved everything they could dish out.

Solo came back from the cockpit to inform him that they were coming up on Alderaan. The look in the man's eyes was odd. It was almost as if he half believed what Luke had told him, but didn't want to. A childhood hero-worship of the Jedi conflicted with the information he had been given. Information that happened to be true in this case.

He looked away and said nothing while they approached the cockpit.

When they got out of hyperspace, it was only to find asteroids where the lush and green planet of Alderaan had once been. Soon after this, they were captured in the tractor beam that was emitted by the space station that had destroyed the beautiful and peaceful world that had housed a number of his friends.

&!&!&!&!&

Vader listened to the report on the captured vessel. It seemed that the enigma that was Princess Leia would be of some use after all. Now to persuade the idiot Grand Moff Tarkin to spare her for as long as it took to determine exactly what use she would be.

Edited on 3/13/2012